by CCW | 17 February 2023 10:00
The stained glass windows in the Chapel tell a story of history and education with respect to the School’s life and purpose. This week’s reading from Hosea, the great love-prophet of the Jewish scriptures, speaks about the divine love which leads us with “the cords of compassion and the bands of love” in spite of our frequent betrayals of love. But God is God and not man. Divine love seeks the perfection of our human loves, as we saw last week with Paul’s great hymn to love. Just so the windows open us out to the larger dimensions of an ethical, intellectual, and spiritual way of thinking and being.
The window in the choir, just behind the organ, depicts the founder of the School, Bishop Charles Inglis. It is based on an actual portrait of him by Robert Field (1810) which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The School was founded out of the turbulence of the American Revolution by those who were committed to the English monarchy, thus known as Loyalists. One of the first things Charles Inglis did as Bishop was to found the School and the College in 1788 and 1789 respectively, recognizing the importance of an education that would contribute to public life and service, hence the motto Deo Legi Regi Gregi, for God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People. Thus the window points us to the Buckle window in the nave about Christ as a child of twelve being found in the temple both as student and teacher but then going down to Nazareth and entering into public service.
That window in the nave is framed by the beginning of what I like to call the Canterbury Connection. Why Canterbury? Because the School comes out of a Christian and Anglican background; Canterbury is the seat of the religious head of the Anglican Churches. Bishop Inglis was consecrated and sent to Nova Scotia by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, in 1787. Thus the first window on your right in the nave depicts Augustine of Canterbury, sent as a missionary to England by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. He had seen in the Roman marketplace some slaves. He asked who they were and was told they were ‘Angles,’ a tribe in ancient Britain. He famously remarked, non Angles sed Angeli, “not Angles but Angels,” and thereupon sent Augustine as a missionary. He became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
The other window on the other side of the Buckle Window of the Child Christ depicts Theodore of Tarsus. He, too, was an Archbishop of Canterbury (7th century) but intriguingly Greek speaking. This suggests something of the emphasis and place of the study of classics in the educational programme of the School and College traditionally. Thus on the other side of the nave is an image of Anselm of Canterbury, a remarkable scholar in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries who is the father of scholasticism. He, too, was made Archbishop of Canterbury though he would rather have stayed in his monastery teaching and thinking about the rational reasons for the Christian faith captured in his famous statement, fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. He was, of course, Latin speaking. The window reflects some of his written works such as Cur Deus Homo, “Why God Became Man,” and his Proslogion and Monologion about what is called “the ontological argument,” a philosophical argument for the existence of God.
The next window, completing the programme that brings us back to Bishop Inglis, depicts Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury in the sixteenth century. He was the principal architect of the Book of Common Prayer (1549/52) which along with the King James Version (1611) and the works of Shakespeare contributed to the shape and development of early modern English. The Cranmer window is based on Gerlach Flicke’s famous 1545 painting of Cranmer which shows him with pen in one hand and the Epistles of St. Paul in the other along with a stack of books. The title of one is De Fides et Operibus, “On Faith and Works,” written by another Augustine, the great North African theologian, Augustine of Hippo, 5th century. The portrait and window capture the primary intent of the English Reformation, explained by the scholar Diarmaid MacCulloch as the recovery of the Scriptures understood by way of the best of the Patristic commentators, especially Augustine. The connection to the Tudor ascendency is also present in the form of the Tudor roses on the table-cloth, combining the symbolic roses of the House of Lancaster and the House of York, a reference to “the Wars of the Roses” which preceded the rise of the Tudor dynasty in the sixteenth century.
Thus the windows in the nave and chancel illustrate the interplay of the Canterbury connection and classical education that is part of the history of the School and which speaks to the idea of an education that promotes various forms of public service over the two and half centuries of the existence of the School and College. Bishop Inglis’ grandson, John Inglis, for instance, was “the hero of Lucknow,” who, as Arthur Wentworth Eaton, says, “saved India for the British Empire”! In “Black Heritage” month, I am reminded of another decorated and local hero, William Hall, the first black Canadian to receive the Victoria Cross for his conspicuous bravery also in suppressing the Indian Mutiny. He lived in the area of Hantsport and is commemorated there by a memorial. We may have critical questions about such colonial and imperialist adventures and campaigns but they are an inescapable feature of the history of our global world and its complexities. There is no single story as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it in her superb Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story[1]”. There is the constant task of thinking through the ambiguities of conflicts and confusions in which we are all implicated, one way or another. None of us has a privileged view from which to judge others without also examining ourselves.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2023/02/17/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-16-february/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.